EVALUATION:Q7 What have we learned about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

All the different technologies work together to create our product, for example, we would film the movie, using the camera and tripod, we saved the footage on the Memory Cards, then import the footage to Final Cut, where we can edit the movie, (adding the titles created on Adobe After Effects) then using Soundtrack Pro, we added a soundtrack! Then to finalise our film and change the format, we used Quicktime Player, then Handbrake.

EVALUATION:Q8 Looking back at our preliminary task, what do we feel we have learned in the progression from it to the full product?

EVALUATION:Q4/5 What kind of media institution might distribute our media product and why? How will we attract/address our audience?

Being a particularly low budget film doesn't make the act of distribution particularly easy, however, being in the 21st century has many advantages when it comes to the media. For example, the internet has created the ability to access the whole world by a touch of a button, surely we can use this incredible tool to help market our small scale opening.
For example, just by putting this short film (below) on Youtube and submitting it to various competitions and festivals such as the ' No Limits Film Festival 2010' and the 'Yobi.tv Film Making contest 2010'
The short film has won awards such as the 'Best Young Filmmaker Award at Fastnet Short Film Festival' and 'Best Fiction Award at The Altered Images Student Post Production Festival in London 2010'

As seen in the description of the film above, there is a gigantic number of websites, competitions and festivals that are created and designed to help people showcase their talents and projects. For example the website http://yobi.tv/ is specially made as an online talent competition website. Makers of any film, including myself can upload their projects and enter them into various competitions, mmeanwhile having the opportunity to reach a hugely diverse audience.
Many student films have been showcased and funded by companies such as 'First Light' (http://www.firstlightonline.co.uk/) which encourage students to make films and can even provide equipment and tools to help develop their skills. For example
Hey Jumper by Elishama Udorok at First Light has won an award thanks to 'First light' and this has helped increase the number of people that are interested in the film. If our film is good enough, I believe that we can upload our opening too, and if it is recognised as an outstanding piece, we would also have the opportunity of our film being shown to various groups of people constantly.
If we are extremely lucky, we could just upload or film opening to youtube and suddenly be a worldwide sensation just like this young lady...

In the 6 weeks that this video has been in the media, it has raked a record breaking 70 million views. Although many people say they dislike the film, word about it has spread like wildfire and people all over the globe have been talking about it. But publicity is what many film makers strive for and dream about, and this young girl has proven that it really is possible to be known by millions in a matter of days.

We've uploaded our film to Youtube too! Lets see if we have had the same impact to the global community...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJ4BUQE2tk8

Screenshot of the Video being Uploaded

Our media product will be made into a DVD along with all the openings from our year at our college, this DVD will be made into 200 copies and be given out to all the AS media students, this is a great opportunity as it would mean that at least 200 people would have our film at their fingertips. Our movie will also be shown at the 'screen on the green' in Islington, which will be a great opportunity to showcase our opening to a large group of people who can then give us great feedback, as well as being able to spread their thoughts and opinions of the film by word of mouth. We would also be able to upload our video to sites like http://vimeo.com/ and http://www.metacafe.com/ as well as social networking sites such as http://www.facebook.com/.

Screenshot of our opening on Facebook

This would allow us to show thousands of online users our films, and this would hopefully encourage them to share the film themselves, creating some kind of ripple effect. As a result, maybe our film will become as successful as that music video above...

Evaluation:Q6 Audience feedback and comment

The first time we had showed our film opening was to our media class, this was quite nerve-wrecking to say the least, I was desperate to hear the opinions of my classmates and had my fingers (and toes) crossed that they wouldn't find it boring. So, after watching a few other groups' work, it was out turn, suddenly I felt like we were in the middle of the Sahara Desert (yes, I felt hot) as I heard the music that meant that our opening was on screen.

All in all, we had quite a positive response, from our classmates, a few people said it contained slightly too much walking but we had managed to keep their attention from our interesting edits and great music. Yay!

A general picture of our classmates' response

As you can see, the word cloud has a huge emphasis on 'Good,' 'Soundtrack,' 'editing,' and 'titles.' The 'good,' suggests that we have an overall positive response from our audience, although it isn't the greatest compliment in the world, the word 'good' simply suggests that we had our audience's approval.
The word 'soundtrack' is also one of the most eye-catching words on the Wordle. Thankfully, the soundtrack was one of the strongest points of our opening, and is also the subject to most our complements. Our original soundtrack, has a slow yet catchy melody which adds a sense of professionalism to our film.
Our 'editing' was also a positive topic, many people highlighted the fact that our editing worked really well with the music, and many people really liked the jump-cuts of Konrad walking in the cemetery.
Sadly, our 'titles' weren't such a positive topic, even though we had tried our best to make them visible (without it ruining the atmosphere of the film) we clearly had not found an effective enough solution as many of our classmates said that they were not visible enough. However, it isn't such a huge problem as many successful films such as 'The Stepfather,' contain titles that aren't clearly visible.

A video d of our classmates talking about our film....

Although we had great feedback from our classmates, they weren't our target audience, which is probably a good thing as only around 4 out of the 20 students said that they would happily pay to watch the movie at the cinema. However our feedback gave us great complements and useful advice that we can apply when making our next film, such as realising how important the soundtrack is and knowing that titles should be OBVIOUS.


When we had our cinematic debut i'm proud to say that I feel like our film went down quite successfully, many people cheered both and after it was shown and i even heard someone say "ahh, its like a music video." Which is great as that is exactly the type of opening we wanted! Sadly, the only people that were our target audience were the teachers that had kept pretty quiet during the screening but, we had asked for their opinion many times previously. They had said things like, "it's nice, slow and mysterious with a great use of scenery, I would actually watch this movie." 
This is a great piece of feedback as it is telling us that our film actually appeals to the people that we want it to!!
Our cinematic debut...

EVALUATION:Q2 How does our media product represent particular social groups?

In our movie opening we are only clearly introduced to one particular character and it seems that this character is represented as a smart and groomed businessman. This image is emphasised by the dark coloured simple shirt he wears and by the fact that the film starts by showing him leaving a clean (and quite posh/expensive looking) hotel.
This is obviously not a new type of character; tall, slim attractive men in suits are extremely common among the film industry. As a result, the world is used to lead characters looking good, having a secret then saving the day! Due to this character being so common, it suggests that this is where the success lies, the character is obviously economically powerful as it oozes class and success. This attracts viewers as they would like to escape from reality and do the same! So to some up, success sells.

Bond...James Bond

One of the most famous and recognised smart, groomed men in media is the one and only James  Bond, who is rarely seen without his fully ironed suit (well, apart from the scenes in the bedroom). I believe that (as our film is a thriller) that the first impressions of the character played by Konrad could be influenced by the stereotypical image of the smart businessman that has a dark, and possible violent side.

Another way our main character can be perceived from our opening sequence is actually quite similar, a 007 without the code name. In other words, a simple, hard working businessman. This could be quite similar to the characters shown in the film 'Wall Street: Money never sleeps.' Although I haven't seen the film, the characters involved seem to be quite intelligent and professional, and of course like nearly all characters can have something to hide...

Shia Labeouf in 'Wall Street'

EVALUATION:Q1 In what way does my media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Although I'd like to think that our group had thought of our opening without any direct links to any other films, it was inevitable to think that we wouldn't find other films and openings that had similar shots and story lines. Here are a few examples of shots that our film contain that are similar to movies previously released into the general media:

Our movies comparison to a shot from the opening of 'Durval Discos'

A shot following the character is actually not used as often as one may think. However it is said so be a shot that is very frequently used by director Darren Aronofsky, who has directed films such 'The black Swan' and 'The Wrestler.' Unlike 'Durval Disco,' who uses this shot for most of the opening, we don't use it for very long, due to the lack of interesting surroundings.

Another similarity between 'Paradox' and 'Durval Discos' 

The opening of 'Durval Discos' seems so be a kind of point of view shot of someone walking through a 'Latino' style area, although our opening is completely different, there is another shot that is extremely similar to one that we have also used in our films opening. The shot of the last from behind is slightly over the shoulder, as is ours. However, our one is from a closer proximity which changes the atmosphere as a whole. 

A comparison to the film 'Dirty Harry'

Another similar shot is found in the opening of the film 'Dirty Harry' just after, the lady in the pool is shot, the policeman (Clint Eastwood) is the focus of the shot as he walks towards the scene of the crime. Much like our film, a series of panning shots are used to show him strolling calmly during the opening of the 1971 film.

A close up of the 'Main man'

The film also consists of a close up shot of the lead character as he walks round a corner, we hav an extremely similar shot as our lead character walks round the corner to the cemetery. In the actual film, the lighting is quite dark, which makes it quite difficult to see the man's facial expression and the scenery behind him, in comparison, our shot is very well lit, showing the details of both Konrad's face and the setting behind him.

Another congruent shot is of 'Dirty Harry' putting something in an envelope, in this shot, (like much of the other sections in that film opening) it is quite dark, which is quite opposite to our scene as the envelope is seen in bright daylight. Both of the shots are extreme close ups, showing mostly the envelope with slight reference to the fingers or hands that are holding the envelope itself.

The film 'Juno' also has a similar shot as the character crosses the road.

'Juno's entire opening is actually quite similar to ours, it consists of a main character walking towards a particular destination and uses several different shot types, angles and editing techniques to make it more entertaining. Although, due to their light-hearted/childlike introduction, they had added a cartoon effect to the walking, this is something that wouldn't really have fitted the thriller genre easily and needed very skilled and talented people. In my opinion these are two very good excuses why we just couldn't have the drawings instead.

Another corresponding shot is one of 'Juno's legs, although the shot used in our openng sequence is taken from a slightly different angle, the concept is the same. The shot is aiming to show the way and and what speed Juno walks, and we attempted to do a similar thing. Both shots show some of the floor and a bit of the scenery behind the main character, but due to the diverse backgrounds create completely different pictures

So, overall, I believe we have conventionally established a character (a stereotypical businessman), a typical yet interesting location (cemetery in the city centre), as well as polishing it off with a commonly used narrative opening title sequence. Moreover, like many mystery/crime thrillers we have constructed a slow yet interesting and intriguing start to what is sure to be a thrilling and hugely entertaining movie!

EVALUATION:Q3 Who would be the audience for our media product?

Originally, we thought that our film would be suitable for the older teen or young adult section of the general public. However, (as well as almost everything in this project) things turned out differently. I now believe that in general, that our movie would appeal to both males and females that are over the age of 25 and under the age of around 45. Yes, I know its broad but I did say it was general! They would typically be quite middle class and attend the cinema regularly and enjoy discussing the film with friends during drinks afterwards. The typical movie that would appeal to them is an action thriller or adventure film with a thrilling twist, always  made by the leading producers/directors and starring the most successful actors.
Now, lets get a little more specific, what do these people wear? What's their favourite food? Any hobbies? addictions? nasty habits? The details we could look for are endless!

Here is one example of a perfect member of our audience...
Along with her favourite song:
'Encoder' by Pendulum

And the contents of her handbag (yes, the one in the picture) :

andd me talking about the male.....

Final edit!

Done! Evaluation of our opening.

So, as tomorrow is the deadline, I'm over the moon to say that we have finished our opening. Although we may have had a few disagreements on the way, it has definitely been a great and positive team effort. So, first of all, unsurprisingly, our final edit looks almost nothing like our plan, apart from the fact that Konrad is walking, we had changed the shots and storyline completely. Despite the fact that this comes across as a negative, I believe that we have all made changes and contributions for the better.

Our opening credits consist of Konrad exiting a hotel, walking to a cemetery and finding an envelope in the grave that he was visiting. Asleep yet? Yes, although this simple (and slightly boring) idea doesn't come across as a Oscar winning movie, it had created ample opportunity to experiment with different shots and angles and I'd like to think that we have taken full advantage of this fact. Moreover, the fact that we had realised that this wasn't the most exciting storyline, really helped us focus on the editing and sound aspect of the project. This was due to the fact that we knew it was the only way to really make the audience enjoy themselves.

So that's exactly what we did, thanks to our rush last minute decisions and impulse-fuelled actions, we created an opening which I'd like to think that we are all proud of. The thing that I'm extra-glad about is the fact that we managed to use an original song that we are almost certain that no one has listened to before. This gives our opening an extra edge and shows that our group is not only talented in itself, but also know talented people!
Talking about talent, one of our other unique points is the opening that was made by Konrad; the 'Candi Studios' opening clip (seen above) is quite possibly my favourite part of the whole opening, and I cant help but gloat about the fact that I had added the sound for it! haha!
After asking for a few opinions and pretending to by shy when other classmates asked to watch our opening, we recieved some great positive feedback as well as some minor constructive criticism. However, most of us were already aware of some of the flaws in our movie, we just wanted to ignore they were there as there was simply nothing we can do about it, either due to the lack of useful footage, are the simple fact that we had run out of ideas. But, one thing that received the most positive reaction was our title music, one person stated that he thought...

"The music is really great, you sure it's nothing professional?"

So that was a great positive feedback that really boosted our confidence, another was when a teacher said...

"I like it, its simple but effective, good job!"

So, before I sound like an over-confident moron (if I haven't already), I would like to sum up by saying that I believe that our thriller opening is soooooooo much better than any of us thought it would be, and I would also like to thank everybody that helped us make it. Furthermore, I would also like to say thanks to the rest of the group, for being so cooperative and hard-working (most of the time lol), we really pulled up our socks and made this film as good as it could be... hopefully we'll have the grade to prove it!

And Here it is...

Nearly done...

So, we hoped today was the final day of editing... we were wrong! Although we have completed most of our opening, we just need to polish the edges and complete those all important finishing touches.
As I had mentioned before, we had received the music just in time, and as I had 'Bugsy'ed being the sound editor from the start of the project i was both extreeemmely thankful that it had arrived and also dreading the pressure, because if the song didn't fit, we would be done for!

Here is one version of the track:



Thankfully, it did fit quite well, and when we showed our edited clip to one of our amazingly wise technicians he commented that he 'really like the music'
yaay!

So know we have the footage itself sorted, and the sound sorted, the only thing left is the titles...
We managed to put them up and arranged and placed them in places where we thought were appropriate, however this wasn't too east as much of our footage wasn't really suitable for the black writing we had. However, our group, along with many people who had seen our opening agreed that changing it to another colour would simply ruin our opening. So, while thinking about the evident problem, I had an idea!
We could still have the writing black, but just use a white outline!
Although, in theory, it sounds quite good (to me at least) this might turn out looking quite awful.. I guess we'll find out!


So after doing this, we found that it did work!  we had the normal black font then had the same writing but a size bigger in white behind it, it created a shadow effect and gave a quite mysterious effect. Although it was effective we decided not to apply it to all the tiles, just the ones which weren't absolutely clear!

Music!

Well although it was last minute (more like second), we hav finnaalllyy received the songs! Also, due to the fact that we got the song directly from the makers (the band 'Diafora') we have zero copyright issues and their full consent to use the song. The song has quite a simple melody and and a quite solemn tone which i think is extremely suitable for our opening. Once we finish editing the footage itself, we'll put the track on, editing the music at suitable times (obviously), then, put on the rest of the titles and thenn... finitoo!

Due to our amazing music, I think (without realising) our group has created a music video style opening, slightly similar to the 'Taking of Pelham 123' movie, which happened to be one of our favourites anyway.
So, it seems like our movie isn't going to be anywhere near as a disaster as some of us thought!
yay!

panic.

Well, during another stressful day of editing, it seems like I'm definitely the most stressed over the fact that our movie isn't that great, and that we only haev under 4 days to bloomin complete it!!

We have most of the footage edited to a fairly good standard and have thought of places and frames for the titles to go.
However, our music isn't as promising as I hoped it would be, the song that I had posted on my previous blog seems pretty perfect to me, as long as we don't use the track with vocals...
Right this moment, I am waiting to be contacted by the band members to see if they can organise and send me a instrumental track as soon as possible...

Fingers crossed!

Titles.

So, while we were waiting for our new footage to upload, we began to look for potential titles for our Movie....

We are also thinking of re-naming our film,
Potential names, (excluding our original idea) include;  Enigma and Paradox.  We believe these would create a sense of mystery and hopefully help build a little suspense.

However, it seems like we've encountered a small problem. The computer won't allow us to use downloaded fonts, so, our attempt at becoming a little more unique is failing.

Soundcheck: My attempt at adding music to blogger...

On this little window, if you click the play icon, you should be able to hear a potential track for our movie.
But, if we do use this song, it would be without the vocals, so it's not too much like a music video :-)

Filming, finally over....

Well, just like the title suggests, we have completed filming. The phrase better late than never comes to mind :-)
although, the storyline is still pretty awful, both the group and I believe that we can edit this to make it seem pretty kool.
Maybe backwards? hmm. That's not a bad idea actually, it could be like a less eventful version of 'momento'? lol

Konrad 'On Set'

Anyway, filming wasn't the most exciting thing in the world, I'm pretty sure that everyone had lost any scrap of enthusiast we had left. The fact that we were in a cemetery didn't help either, but on the positive side, we got our filming done, and we have just under 5 days to edit and make an opening to the best of our ability.
We had a slight disagreement as we were leaving, it was over the silliest thing and I really don't know why we made into such a big fuss but oh well. Noone wanted to take the camera to college the following morning.. so typical teenage laziness took over and we all went sour about the situation. But hopefully, tomorrow there will be noo awkwardness =/ lol

My Epiphany!

Okay, as I am already on the PC, I thought I should blog about my sudden idea!
We were thinking about what object Konrad should find at the graveyard...
a key? a coin?
To be frank, any of those things would make me change the channel... so how about... a letter?


*insert applause here*

Thank you thank you, I don't know why it hadn't occurred to me before... but better late then never I guess.
So, picture this, konrad walks to the grave blah blah... he sits down, as he puts the flowers down he sees a white envelope beneath the soil, he pulls it out from the dirt, opens it, removes the letter, and taaddaaaa


Echo..

(that's the title by the way) lol!


oh and i was thinking maybe this font??

http://www.dafont.com/jellyka-western-princess.font

now, I just have to convince the others... o_o

Listen....

In my opinion, the only thing that has the power to make our film remotely successful is the soundtrack. However, then, we have the issue of not being able to use copyrighted material..
BUUTTTt we have a plan!  Being the talented people that we are, if we can't find an non-copyrighted version of the sound we want, we can recreate the song/music with our own instruments!
e.g, yesterday, simply due to boredom, I learnt to play this song which creates a mellow, sad atmosphere without being too depressing...

However, the slow pace of this song, and the boring pace of the movie itself is surely enough to put our audience to sleep... So we must thing of something better....

But what???

maybe this??  but this sounds a little tooooo down I guess

ahh decisions decisionss....

   

Roughly cutting our film up...

Well, not that we have most of our footage, and our rough cut deadline has passed, we have kinda made our rough cut. Emphasis on the rough. Still not feeling to keen on the whole concept of our opening, we tried to make the footage we have got look worth while, hoping to draw attention from our - in my opinion - DRY storyline.
So to start off with, we focused on the visual side of the footage, selecting the suitable shots and sections that we can use. Due to the huuugee amount of footage we had, this was indeed quite a struggle. But, after we while we got a relatively good order and we began to tune our movie. Although, as we didn't really have the correct footage for the final section, we couldn't really complete the rough cut at the standard that i was hoping. However, now that we have a (sort of) clear idea about what we have done and what needs doing, we will be on our way!

The Rough Cut.

Our new plan!

Yup, that's me.

In our attempt to be the worlds most indecisive media group, we knew we needed to come up with a new plot for our opening...
So what do we dooo?

Well, wile putting together our rough cut... and we MEAN rough... we were having a lovely group discussion while playing games on Konrad's phone..
HAhahahaha, no ofcourse we werent playing.... =/

Annywayyss.. so while deciding on what to do, we thought we should share our dilemma with the rest of the class... while doing this we gained some pretty kool feedback...

Although it may seem pretty boring, we thought, its better to look boring and plain, than pure stupid. So, thats what we are going for, we are ruling out the option of the 'sack' and replacing it with a more subtle approach... hoping to stand out from the crowd we are going for the more mellow thriller.
So, to make sure that our footage doesn't get wasted, we plan to do this:
Konrad walks to the cemetery, puts down flower/scarf then finds something in the grave...maybe a watch or key or knife.. but SOMETHING that can hold your attention...


goodness, I hope we pull this off....